“In the beginning was Logos.* And Logos was God. And Logos was with God.

And the spirit of God was brooding over the waters.” Genesis

And then God created the Life system of Earth, the Biosystem.

It has taken several billions of years and many false starts — using the Law of Life — to put together a beautifully functional information system that can organize energy from the sun to maintain the Life of the whole Earth, balanced against the force of entropy.

But God is patient, and now here we are, living as nodes within the corposystem, which is a subsystem of the Biosystem, and we are in great danger of losing our potential future on Earth because the corposystem is making war against its own environmental system, the Biosystem. And the corposystem cannot win.

If the corposystem loses this war and dies, we humans begin again trying to build a new social system that can integrate usefully among the other naturally evolved systems; on the contrary, if the Biosystem dies and must start over again looking for that viable balance – then we all die, probably down to the microbial level.

We are not in charge. That is the message of God and all the gods. We have been kicked out of our dominion over the Garden of Eden because, instead of nurturing the creation of the system of Life — we tried to dominate the works of God and use them for our own gain,.

We (the corposystem) still are doing this; we have not learned.

The corposystem, the current dominant corpo-political social system within which most of us were raised, is a naturally evolved complex adaptive human social system. It has micro-properties and macro-properties. Its macro-property (emergent property) that threatens us all is “growth by domination for gain.” The corposystem has grown by dominating systems that are smaller than itself. Eating up both their energy and their information to maintain its growth against the disorganizing alternative of entropy.

We are not in charge of the Garden of Eden – or the Law of Life — and it is time we take charge of ourselves, instead of trying to bring the whole world to its knees, take charge of our own behaviors that generate the toxic emergent properties of our corposystem — over-growth by domination, for corposystem gain.

And now the corposystem is trying to dominate the Biosystem, a larger and more powerful system, and the other half of its own life; the source of all energy for Life of Earth.

A subsystem cannot win a war against its own environmental system that is the other half of itself. That is NOT how evolution works. Better it were that the systems of Life cooperate for the benefit of all. That is the function of evolution. The limiting factors of the environment “talk” to the emergent characteristics of its subsystems so the subsystems know when they are not going with the program.

Our corposystem (a subsystem) emergent characteristic is unsustainable because domination is not how evolution works; because our growth is causing irreparable harm to our own environmental system, the other half of our selves; and because our thirst for unilateral human profit of all kinds destroys essential elements of our environment that are not a rightful component of our corposystem.

And now the corposystem has reached the end of its growth, just as a cancer on your kidney eventually reaches the end of its growth unless it is stopped. It eats up your energy and your information/complexity, and you die. Unless we can stop the growth of the corposystem, we all die, all the generations of humans, our corposystem and very likely our environmental Biosystem that is already very sick.

Perhaps after all we are not the chosen ones for whom God has been so patiently waiting?

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of FactFictionFancy.Wordpress.com.

How long do we have? For me that question is so heavy with corposystem assumptions that I cannot answer it within my “vow” to do more good than harm. If I answer it straight, then I am reaffirming the validity of the corposystem mind-set and contributing to what I call “fake debates” that abound on the internet, functioning primarily as displacement activities that distract us from a discussion of problem-solving.

If I do not answer it straight, but begin to spout mechanisms and solutions, the corposystem world view cannot hear because if it has not already happened, then we believe the corposystem will take care of us we only need to wait a while. Unfortunately — it has already happened. People are starving, WWIII is under way, systems are crashing. All the things predicted in my early blogs — wait for what? It started in our yesterdays.

We have no time left to begin dealing with the primary modern cause of our biological problem, which is excessive growth in both population and other measures. The relationship between resources and numbers of people has been known for centuries. It’s too late to begin in time. It has already happened and is happening every hour. People all over the earth are already suffering and dying so that our corposystem can continue to profit from war, the births, the deaths and the transportation of all the products from the (suffering) Biosystem into our treasury. How can you talk to people who cannot understand this? Facts are facts, it is history, it already happened. It is too late to deal with the primary cause of the problem “in time,” and we are it.

So, unless we define what it is that we want to do, the question has no answer. It’s an example of how corposystem mind-set prevents us from doing what is required to change the corposystem mind set. The function of a system is to maintain itself, in this case by preventing us thinking about and discussing the issues that could succeed in solving the specific problem that is or could be under our control. Yesterday is not under our control. Neither is tomorrow if we continue to ask such questions.

I think it would be better to spend ALL our time thinking about things that ARE under our control and begin to deal with the most important root cause things immediately so (with luck) we may extend the amount of time we have to do the next most important things. Because we do know that the root cause of our current biological problem is overpopulation, and it doesn’t stop.

Do we understand what overpopulation means biologically? It doesn’t mean there are other people making us uncomfortable. It means that the mice, or the rats, or the lemmings, or the people, eat up all the food and then they die. That’s it in plain terms.

How difficult would it be to make birth control available for everyone on earth who wants it — tomorrow? Nothing like as difficult as trying to conquer the laws of nature, or even climate change.

Is it more complicated than that? Of course it is, everything is complicated, but overpopulation is the biological root cause, and unless we believe we can overwhelm the laws of nature — of course we do believe that, but unfortunately we cannot, and let’s not sit around debating that either when we know for a mathematical fact, if it doesn’t change too drastically, that the earth COULD produce enough food to feed fewer people.

The question is not how long do we have before we must do something. The question is when are we going to start to do something that causes more good than harm. In other words, will it empower the Biosystem more than it empowers the corposystem? Will it cause more good than harm?

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of FactFictionFancy.Wordpress.com.

Sometimes I wonder. Actually most of the time I wonder why we-the-people try so hard to get someone else to take care of the problem that we haven’t tried to understand the cause of so we can take care of it ourselves. What is the point of begging our leaders to deal with climate change when we at the same time require our leaders to give us everything else that we want, and the other things we want always involve growth of the human “imprint” on the earth that unbalances the miracle of the Life that is our Earth.

The Law of Life is not only the Law of Life on Earth – it is also the real bottom line of human existence. Life must stay in balance to stay alive. If it can’t stay the way we like it — it will change so that it can stay in a different balance. It does this by several mechanisms that are biological. By flowing energy through the living system; by recycling the materials of which it is made, and by interacting with the environmental conditions of now. To do this job of staying alive, the Living Earth changes in response to WHAT WE DO TO IT NOW.

Fracking, for example, is largely illegal, and we do have laws of humans that were meant to protect us from ourselves, and we could be out there enforcing them, in addition to marching. And teaching ourselves how the laws of nature REALLY do function to maintain Life. How they really do function, not the fairy stories about cornucopias or survival of the fittest.

And devising new ways to make laws for humans that will support the Law of Life.

Most of our leaders are a good bit more clueless than we are, so getting their attention may not help.

Oh, yes. That’s why we try so hard to get their attention.

Well, I would say the Climate March was a good try, and I wish it good luck.

Much rather I would like to see the people actually learn to understand the reality of the miracle that is the Biosystem so we can participate in it with love and joy, rather than duking it out with our leaders AND WITH THE BIOSYSTEM, trying to force them both to give us whatever we want without regard to the consequences to the Biosystem and therefore to ourselves.

Much rather I would like to see these marches also accessible to the poor people, many of whom may have no computers and no iThings and therefore don’t even hear about the march or can’t get there or are more worried about their own children than about ours. I wonder how many of the young people who participated in this march can even imagine such a thing as poor. The poor are after all in the trenches of the corposystem war against the Biosystem. Without them there would not be the success stories of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
that we try to emulate.

There are more poor on earth today than ever in the history of human kind and the only way to reverse that trend is to ALL cooperate with, rather than WAGE WAR against the efforts of our living earth as she tries to keep all her living parts functional and balanced in the way that WE want them to be balanced. We do not care to learn about her real need for balance, what Life on Earth requires to stay alive — and then we complain to our leaders for not giving us what we want, which mostly is more of everything.

More is not balance.

And I was very, very tired.

And I cannot stay in motels any more because they are using more and more of cleaning products and pesticides and chemicals that kill you sense of smell so you don’t realize you are being poisoned, as you sleep, by the cleaning products and pesticides. So I started on home, but about by the time I got to Abiquiu I was too tired to drive, and so I stopped at the Abiquiu Inn.

I have told you about the Abiquiu Inn before, and I will tell you again because it is an oasis in a sea of toxic motels. It is a) quite lovely, b) clean, but cleaned with non-toxic products, c) pet friendly, d) people friendly, e) not over priced, on the low end, for an occasional treat, f) environmentally friendly, as best they can, which of course is not perfect, but I love that all the big beautiful old trees are helping to clean the air. Imagine all the motels in this country how many trees they wiped out in favor of ugly concrete. How much more sickness among the people who stay in toxic motels, and especially the people who work in those places, many of whom do not speak English. How much water and pesticides and toxic air and toxic cleaning compounds they altogether produce and imagine how much less they could be producing. Especially the chain motels that dictate the conditions according to their bottom line and without regard to the natural Law of Balance.

Well, so I thought I would tell you that again, because I don’t suppose the Abiquiu Inn was at the march, but they are nevertheless contributing every day to a better way of doing what they do.Continue reading →

We want to build a human society (system) that is sustainable and reasonably comfortable for humans. That was the dream of the founding fathers; that was the dream of Martin Luther King Jr., and the reason we supported his dream; that was the dream of Jesus and Gandhi and Mandela and countless other dreamers you and I have never heard of. But we-the-people messed it up. So that is not what we have been building.

How did we mess it up? Maybe we didn’t clearly understand the dream in the first place, or maybe we learned too much (but not enough) about too many things in too short a time. Or maybe the power of our technologies and the hubris of our assumptions led us astray.

I had to look up the word hubris a while ago, and now I use it quite a lot because it means pride multiplied by conceit, audacity and self-importance, and that’s what we Americans are. But those were not our intentions, and that does not describe the likes of Jesus and Gandhi, et al. Stubborn they were, but not prideful in the sense of conceit on top of ignorance. Nevertheless, regardless of our intentions, hubris is what we have come to, simply because we are a part of the modern American corposystem, a system that functions out of the energy of hubris.

It would be a lot of fun to go ahead as we are, King of the Hill with all our toys. But it doesn’t work; we are using our toys to destroy our own hill, and destruction does not lead to any of the good things that humans can achieve. I want to grow a joyful human future that is sustainable. I do not want to nurture the suffering generated by the violent blip in a universe of time that is our corposystem of today. http://traffic.libsyn.com/fff/AmyGoodman_OrenLyons_DN130809-clip.mp3

Every system grows or is created around a core characteristic that is “successful.” And it measures its own success in relation to the “ideal” embodied by its own core characteristic. I have said above that our current American corposystem is built around – one of the core characteristics is “hubris.” Because all systems are cyclic, that also means that the people with the most hubris become the most “successful,” or perhaps a better word would be most appreciated, within our existing corposystem. That is one of the ways that a system maintains itself. Of course there are good ways to build pride, but our system does not consider those ways successful. That’s why I use the word hubris.

Our corposystem hubris is built upon a dream of domination (power plus violence) that is maintained by growth based in greed. That is, growth for profit. Not a pretty story, and definitely not sustainable. Nothing in the entire universe, so far as we know, can grow forever. Certainly nothing that is part of the earth can grow forever, and besides that problem, we need all the other parts of the Earth system to make our air, water, and soil, and to capture our energy for us. That’s why the corposystem is already crashing, and the worst part is that it is ruining the Biosystem resources for any future humans.

I believe most of us would rather build a new human system on this earth that is sustainable within a nurturing Biosystem and is based on human values that we admire because we can proudly share them.

This past weekend, I attended a retreat led by Father John Dear and Roshi Joan Halifax. It was a blessing. A set of blessings that give us “something we can do” for human kind on earth. Something positive and sustainable, if we do it right this time.

“Be who you are.” “Be the humane, nonviolent, compassionate child of God that you were born to be.” That is an enormous blessing in this culture. But I took it further: “On top of that, who am I? How can I serve?”

My professional career as a woman in science at a recently all-male, Southern, military university, taught me to think like an activist, so I am (surprise) an activist. My scientific career taught me (no surprise) to think like a scientist, for me, to think about genetics and evolution, the Language of Life on earth. And I will repeat (as often as necessary) that I am not a technologist. Our human technologies are today being used by our human corposystem as weapons in its war against the Biosystem. Science, basic science, is not war – it is inquiry. It is the effort to understand the processes that make Life possible on Earth. This distinction is very important, because we cannot survive a fight against the Biosystem.

And so, about ten years ago I realized I must also learn to think like the Biosystem if my activism is to serve we-the-people. The Biosystem – the system of Life — is NOT primarily about survival of the fittest, nor nature study; it is not emotional. It is not responsive to human wishes, it does not have human values, and human technologies cannot change the Laws of Nature that maintain Life.

All systems are sets of functions that grew up or were created to sustain a unique core property. The core property of the Biosystem is Life Itself. The corposystem is a subunit of the Biosystem, The core property of the corposystem is the use of growth and domination to make money. This is not sustainable. Therefore, the corposystem cannot survive as it is.

Most of us do not want to support the use of violence to make money, but we are caught now in the human system that requires it. We would like to change the system, but all systems are organized to prevent change; that’s what makes them systems; and we can’t change anything by doing more of what we don’t want done; for example, using violence to win – anything — does not reduce violence in the system.

Of course, there are many good actions inside the corposystem: educational, supportive, healing, legal. These are necessary and important, but mostly their function is to patch up the wounded. They are not sustainable and do not effectively change the orposystem — because they are part of the system. So our human tragedy is that all of us are working within the corposystem, and the Corposystem is waging war against the Biosystem. Therefore, like it or not, we are participating in a system that is destroying Life. “What to do?”

I believe Father John’s well-defined methods of active nonviolence give us a way to thwart corposystem violence from outside the corposystem so that the results of our work do have potential to change the very nature of our human presence on earth. And that, indeed, is a blessing. Number two.

For me personally, the third blessing popped into my head in the form of a book title: “The Corposystem War Against the Biosystem,” that explains my life of activism. The Corposystem doesn’t only use physical violence. It walks right into our minds with its violent value system, and emotional dishonesty. It will crash anyhow, because nothing human can win a war against the Biosystem. Why wait? We can start now to build a new human system based in sustainable human and Biosystem values.

Our fourth blessing is permission to mourn, because we will lose what we had in any case — and to rejoice, because here is a way to at least try to build something worthwhile out of the ashes. “Cultivate your grief and your joy; discourage the fear and anger.”

This is great. I’m getting actual questions from readers. So the question today is: How can I learn to be a success so that I can use my human values to benefit all sentient beings?”

And the answer is, I’m Sorry – I can’t tell you how to do impossible things. It’s very unlikely that you can be a “success” as defined by this culture – the corposystem (defined at https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/page/4/) – and still honor your human values to benefit the future of humankind. This is because the corposystem is not human and it is not working to benefit all sentient beings. The purpose/function of the corposystem is to make money by harvesting the products of growth: growing food to sell: corn, cattle; growing merchandise to sell: computers, cars. And even growing humans for corposystem profit.

The corposystem is selling resources. Everything the corposystem sells, including money, ultimately comes from resources that are created by or harvested from the Biosystem. The Biosystem, that is the whole Earth system of Life, can make more resources, but it takes time. The resources are now being depleted faster than the Biosystem can make them. Therefore, growth of anything, in this “anthropogenic” age, cannot benefit the future of humankind as it has done in the past.

There is a conflict of interest between the needs of the corposystem and of the Biosystem. If we don’t promote growth, it is not likely that the corposystem will reward us with “success.” On the other hand, growing the corposystem is harmful to our own future, because a healthy Biosystem is necessary for the survival of humans. Therefore, it is very likely that the most important contribution we can make to the future of human kind is to work for the welfare of the Biosystem rather than the corposystem, even if we don’t succeed.

The function of human cultures (and the corposystem is a human culture) is to provide an environment in which people mature knowing what we should do to grow a sustainable and reasonably comfortable lifestyle. That is the purpose of human cultures. To raise up the children knowing how to behave in a way that will nourish the common welfare. We cannot do that within the corposystem because the corposystem is neither sustainable nor comfortable. Nor even human regardless of the Supreme Court.

Our toxic corposystem raises us up to believe that it is our human responsibility to accomplish profitable miracles. Isn’t that what TV is all about? Teaching us that we are Gods of the impossible? But the bottom line is that trying to do impossible things is more likely to be a waste of your one life. And mine. Our real choice is whether to benefit the corposystem and be a “success” while causing harm to the future generations of sentient beings – or to do what is right for the future generations, regardless of whether or not we become a “success.”

Our responsibility to the future of human kind is to learn to understand the difference between facts and opinions – and to find a valid way to study the FACTS about how the Biosystem functions and what it needs to be healthy – and to discuss opinions about why, how and what we can do to benefit the future welfare of human kind — and then do the very best we can to benefit the Biosystem, and of course at the same time to help those of our neighbors who may be early victims of the corposystem battle for dominance. Fighting among ourselves, or arguing over facts that we cannot change, will only prevent us from using our talents to benefit anyone.

There are only two ways I know of to change the corposystem. One is with violence and the other is without violence. BOTH WILL FAIL if we forge ahead in the belief that we can do miracles within our own personal belief systems — without knowing what we want to change and why and how it will benefit the future generations.

We must choose whether to benefit the corposystem and be a “success,” while causing harm to the future generations of sentient beings — or to do what is right for the future generations of the Biosystem.

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of FactFictionFancy and KEOS Radio, 89.1 FM in Bryan, TX. A copy of the podcast can be obtained at:

So much for the glass is three-quarters empty. Most people do not want to sit around watching it fade away. They want to DO SOMETHING,

What we need to do, in order to achieve our goal of developing a viable, sustainable, reasonably comfortable human presence within the Life system of earth — is to change the human corposystem from a destructive force to a constructive force for Life. I have defined system and Biosystem and corposystem in https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/the-real-answer/ toward the end of the post.

We humans have grown the corposystem. All of us are part of this corposystem. Thus we can change the corposystem. It won’t be easy, because one of the functions of a system, any system, is to maintain itself. (https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/)

But it is possible. We can change the corposystem from a competition-based growth machine into a Life-nurturing maintenance system. Simply by deciding what we all want, and discussing among ourselves how to get it, we can change the system.

I believe what we all want is not “happiness” (undefined and undefinable), nor is it peace defined as absence of war, nor any of the things we are touting that divide us. I believe what we all want is to develop a viable, sustainable, reasonably comfortable human system.

To be viable, sustainable and reasonably comfortable, our corposystem must be changed from what it is now, because now it is not viable long term, and it is based on a competition-and-growth model that is biologically unsustainable and humanly unethical. To be biologically sustainable, the corposystem must stop trying to get what it wants by competing with the Biosystem; to be humanly ethical, we must develop a nurturing model that compassionately supports the needs of the Biosystem, some of which conflict with our own desires. That’s it – we must all (or at least the majority of us) cooperate in that effort, discuss it, evaluate it and stop letting the corposystem tell us what we can and cannot talk about — and it will happen.

If we all have the same goal, and I think we do, then we need to discuss that goal among ourselves rationally, compassionately, realistically, and we will get there. Of course we will also need to learn how to interact in a rational compassionate realistic manner, but I trust us to learn these skills when we finally realize the current corposystem competition (war) model will end in a fight to the death between the corposystem and the Biosystem.

Most of us are not really interested in promoting a fight to the death, especially when we cannot win.

Most people know these things, at least intuitively, and a great many people are working hard or at least contributing by their daily behaviors, such as recycling, to the welfare of the whole community of the Biosystem. But many of the people who are working hard are, in fact, working at cross purposes. Why? Mostly because we do not define and discuss our goals in terms of compatibility with the needs of both of the human community and of the Biological community (defined in https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/
bare-bones-bio…-community-iii/)

Where to begin? Start talking cooperatively about our common goals on our mastheads, letterheads, in our meetings and mission statements. Avoid competing against or dis-respecting the efforts of others who have the same goals and missions. Everyone. No matter what is your individual talent and/or life mission. Everyone can do this.

Systems evolve, and we can evolve this one if we recognize that it IS a system, and it will inevitably try to protect itself from change. How does the corposystem protect itself?

In our culture at this time, the corposystem protects itself primarily by PREVENTING us humans from engaging in honest, ethical, constructive, fact-based communication that engages all the three parts of our brains (https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/
bare-bones-bio…a-quarter-full/).

And what I see the most is defensive rather than constructive responses.

Facts are real; learn about them; individual “heroism” does not grow communal “happiness;” the glass is not half full, and we need to learn about the things that are wrong so we can intelligently deal with them; our behaviors today absolutely affect the quality of life of our grandchildren; blame-placing does not solve problems; speculation should be relevant to the facts on the ground or it won’t solve the problems on the ground; anger and hatred that are used to dominate others do not solve either our own problems or theirs; and even in the most benevolent conditions, focusing on the small picture without regard to the overall Facts of Life only tends to perpetuate the system we already have.

How to change the corposystem? Stop being controlled by the corposystem mantras, either the pie-in-the-sky fairy tales or.the claims that there is nothing we can do. They are all excuses to avoid positive change. If our corposystem tells us that we must not think about positive change, or it tells us to believe in magic, or it tells us we can’t talk rationally about hard issues such as population or climate change (https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/) — then –

the way to change our system is to talk — reasonably, rationally and constructively about these problems as they relate to our common goal — to develop a viable, sustainable, reasonably comfortable human presence within the Life of Earth.

Please don’t tell me you can’t think, or that you have more important things to do than to talk.